"Microsoft has just released the latest installment of the Windows Vista pre-RC1 builds, with Vista Build 5472.5 making its way to TAP and Tech Beta tester today, and for once, MSDN Subscribers too. Build 5472.5 is a standard FRE Staged build, only available in English at the moment, though Arabic, Japanese, and German builds may follow. At this point all the builds we are seeing seem to undergoing severe stages of heavy optimization: although faster code normally comes at the expense of larger files as a rule of thumb, this build of Windows Vista packs a punch performance-wise, but is only a 100 MB larger than its predecessor. "

My god they release a performance optimized version with some small tweaks and you all call for them to close shop... when linux or osx accounts for over 90% of desktop computers then you can talk.. until then just shut the hell up.

As for the wallpaper i kind of like it i've seen the hills like that down here in the caribbean but i never seem to have a camera when the unlight actually does dicide to pull off the orangy glow.

As for Linux and Apple they can both bite my butt... I use linux at my office and refuse to use it for my desktop, after probably 8 distro's on my desktops and reinstalling over 20 times and trying just about 30 kernal versions/revisions... i've decided im sticking with window. You install it and it works end of story... 2000,XP,2003,Vista for me are extremely stable no BSODS etc... so you know what its the perfect enviroment for the shear fact that IT JUST WORKS.

As for apple they have a wonderful OS i will give them that but when they have the software and developer support windows has perhaps ill look at it more than just in glancing. Then theirs the even bigger reason i won't use OSX ... Why is it apple although using x86 hardware still has to play god and require "apple" hardware... grow up and share, dell should sue apple for monopolizing the apple OS... the fact is its on x86 so it should work on all x86 not just "apple" x86 ... GIVE ME A BREAK

As for apple they have a wonderful OS i will give them that but when they have the software and developer support windows has perhaps ill look at it more than just in glancing. Then theirs the even bigger reason i won't use OSX ... Why is it apple although using x86 hardware still has to play god and require "apple" hardware... grow up and share, dell should sue apple for monopolizing the apple OS... the fact is its on x86 so it should work on all x86 not just "apple" x86 ... GIVE ME A BREAK

Give *me* a break. If Dell were to sue Apple for a monopoly I'm pretty sure its a no-brainer that Dell wouldn't win that one. Apple doesn't have a monopoly with OS X because its only available on Macs. The actual marketshare of OS X is way to small to be considered a monopoly. How about Mandriva sues Dell because Dell isn't selling Mandriva Linux on their computers? C'mon....

Give *me* a break. If Dell were to sue Apple for a monopoly I'm pretty sure its a no-brainer that Dell wouldn't win that one. Apple doesn't have a monopoly with OS X because its only available on Macs. The actual marketshare of OS X is way to small to be considered a monopoly. How about Mandriva sues Dell because Dell isn't selling Mandriva Linux on their computers? C'mon....

Apple could easily say in defence also; why doesn't Dell develop their own operating system and ecosystem on which applications could be built? I mean, Dell has BILLIONS in profits, why don't they invest some of those into an easy to use FreeBSD (for argument sake), and call it Dell-OS, and work with partners to provide software through their online retail channel.

There is nothing stopping HP or Dell from replicating the vertically integrated system vendor by using their existing product or opensource project; in the case of HP, porting HP-UX to AMD64 and putting an easy to use interface ontop, or in the case of Dell, creating a customised, easy to use distribution based on FreeBSD, which gives then the flexibility of maintaining it in a closed source model (or have parts open).

The people who whine about Apple whine because thtey want the 'Apple Experience' without the Apple price tag; that Apple price tag exists because Apple use their hardware sales to subsidise their operating system development; I doubt the money they make off their operating system sales cover the cost of developing and maintaining, especially the amount of R&D that goes into developing the said products. They might break even, but the certainly don't rake in the money like Microsoft do, with profit margins of 85% plus.

It certainly sounds like you enjoy the way windows works for you, congrats, you fall into the majority.

I do not appreciate the way it stores libraries in memory, the way the priority works, or how userspace is allocated, nor do I like being restricted from controlling my computer,and i do not enjoy just using half of the bits on my processor.

I do not appreciate the way it stores libraries in memory, the way the priority works, or how userspace is allocated, nor do I like being restricted from controlling my computer,and i do not enjoy just using half of the bits on my processor.

Then there is the most annoying aspect, this assumption that all people us GUI, and as such, they castrate the CLI to the point that its useless.

Atleast with MacOS X, the developers realise that there are still some old schoolers like me out there who would rather use the CLI tools, and pipe the out put through several commands rather than having to use half a dozen tools to accomplish the same task.